Be Not Far from Me(17)

There’s one thing I forgot to add on the list of things I’ve got: pants, shirt, underwear, bra—and my own hair. I yank it out a few strands at a time, rolling them together in my palms until they’re twisted so tight nothing’s going to break them loose. Then I tear out some more, lengthening and thickening the cordage as I roll it until I’ve got something that can pass for rope.

I’m not Rapunzel, and nobody could climb this, but it’s good enough for what I need. I take the bit of ash branch and tuck the cordage into a split end, pressing the other against the flat piece. Then I start to spin it.

Davey Beet taught me to do this, years ago when he asked if anyone knew how to make a fire. I watched him spin a branch against a flat piece of wood, fingers pulling down on a bit of string he nocked through the top, pushing down and spinning at the same time, the sinewy muscles of his arms distracting me for a full minute. This may be where my fascination with boys’ arms started, come to think of it.

Physics applies no matter where you are in the world, and Davey Beet made fire in the woods with nothing but friction, his face red and arms shaky with effort by the time a bit of smoke rose up, but he did it. Then he showed us how.

I was the only one that managed to follow his example that day, and I’ve done it since because it’s not a skill you want to lose. I’d never tried it with nothing but grubs and a worm in my stomach and half a foot open to the world, but science is a solid thing, and I get a thin line of smoke just in time, right before my arms are about to give out. I feed it with dead leaves and a puff of my breath, my heart thrilling at the sight of a spark, then the lick of a flame. I’m not going to starve, and I’m not going to be cold, and it’s all because of Davey Beet.

And the reason why I don’t want to think about that is because he’s more than likely dead.

Davey Beet walked into the Smokies with a full pack and a broken heart, his girl having gone off to college and found something that fit her better than already broken-in shoes. I was twelve and ready to show off what I had, packing only tank tops and ripped jean shorts in my bag for Camp Little Fish, a few years before he left.

But it was my brain Davey liked. He was seventeen by then, running a whole program about trail survival. I signed up for it the day I got to camp, hoping he’d notice me as I stood there uncapping a Sharpie and putting my name big and bold, first one on the poster for his class.

He saw me, sure, but it wasn’t my boobs that he cared about. Davey was a good guy, and while there were plenty of others who might take a look at something too young to touch (and some that didn’t mind taking the risk of touching something that was illegal), all he cared about was my mind.

And my attitude.

Davey started calling me Ass-kicker Ashley the second year I went back to Little Fish, when I bashed a fellow camper on the back of a head with a stick for putting a toad in the fire. He said he just did it to see what would happen, so I used the same line of defense, although I could hardly claim surprise at the trickle of blood that had seeped from behind his ear after my first swing. I also can’t blame pure curiosity once the discovery had been made and I took a second swing anyway.

The directors would’ve sent me home, but no one could get ahold of Dad, and I didn’t know Momma’s phone number, so they had to keep me. I was separated from the other kids, which was fine because they were all a bunch of assholes anyway. That’s when Davey took to calling me Ass-kicker Ashley and showed me how to set a snare.

So when he saw me come back that third year, all leggy and sunburned and taking my time writing out my name in cursive on his class roster, he smiled and asked if I wanted to know what plants I could eat and which ones would kill me in return. I fought down the blush rising in my already burned skin and told him hell yes. He took the Sharpie from me and scribbled out my last name, writing Ass-kicker in front of my first.

“That way I know who it is,” he said.

I was the only one who signed up for that class. Everyone else wanted to take ceramics and something about jewelry. They sent an adult out there with us—whether for the sake of propriety or because the directors were afraid I might have a habit of hitting people with sticks, I don’t know. But our escort usually fell asleep under a tree, sitting so still that at one point we came back from a hike to find a snake sunning in his lap.

For a week I had Davey Beet to myself, and while I know I didn’t do a good job hiding my childish crush, he never acknowledged it, keeping up a steady stream of bird identification, toxic toads, and what mushrooms I’d better never, ever touch unless I wanted them growing out of my spine a week later, a not-too-good smell coming out of my corpse.

He taught me how to track too, then made me turn my back while he walked away, with instructions to yell three times if I got freaked out and thought I was lost. He said he’d come for me if that happened, and there were a few times while I tracked him that I wanted to call out, but pride kept it down. That, and I’d spot the next sign, a step or two ahead. A bent twig, a turned leaf, a muddy slip where he didn’t get traction.

I found him twice, the third time he went down to the creek and circled behind me, pushing me in when I heard his footstep a second too late. I’d shrieked and splashed him, tickled pink that he’d touched me, even if it was just in fun. We waited for the water to settle and then laid on our bellies on the bank, Davey plucking a fish out with his bare hands, easy as pie. (Momma always hated that saying. She said pie is actually pretty hard, especially the crust part.)